JB on Spider-Man, JRJr on Spider-Man and Thor, Waid and Garney
on Cap, Perez on Avengers... I even enjoyed the return of Alpha Flight
and Heroes for Hire, and Thunderbolts was great. Looking back,
things were fun. I even enjoyed Smith and Qs Daredevil run.

There. I said it.

I may have enjoyed Marvel more before but never that much since...

---

I'm pretty sure I have the chronology right that Harras was Marvel EIC for only a few months at most when Heroes Reborn with the early days of comics blogs on the Internet in 1996 (the first comics to credit him as EIC were published in January of that year). Heck, I could swear that the HR announcement came a few months before this, in late '95, but I can't confirm that. Anyway, the first HR issues hit the stores in Sept. '96. So, there were only 8 months between Harras' first issues and HR. One way or the other, he just wasn't EIC long enough to have enough pull to make such a decision, not to mention the time it must have taken from start to finish to pull off this outsourcing trick. It had to come from above. And it looks like he wasn't there long enough to try to fight this plan. I'm pretty sure I read that Lee and Liefeld were told that Harras was being brought in as EIC, and that helped them decide to go for it, given their previous working relationship with him.

Edited by Vinny Valenti on 28 June 2011 at 11:16pm

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YES! Now that I think about it, Harras was like the anti-Shooter. Started off with micromanaging the X-books and forced off long-standing writers in favor of "hot" artists, and did have a role to play in the big boom and bust of the industry, but once Heroes Reborn ended, I felt he really made an effort to turn things around. Another reason why I felt that he wasn't really behind the outsourcing was that he made an effort to emphasize how important the FF and Avengers were to the Marvel Universe with the "World without heroes" arc in many of the remaining Marvel titles that were being published alongside Heroes Reborn. I was afraid that he was going to turn ever Marvel book into an X-book somehow, but what ended up happening was that he took a risk and put some of the X-books' top artistic talent on other regular MU books - Adam Kubert on Hulk, Andy Kubert on Ka-Zar and later Captain America, etc. During this time he appeared to de-emphasize the X-books, too.

Not to mention that JB has said that Harras was generally hands-off on his late-90's Marvel work. Harras had a rocky start, but he was far from the worst EIC around.

I've been enjoying this thread, much like any of the other tales from the bullpen or of anything from the "inside" of the comics industry that JB and others frequently provide.  For whatever reason, I've always had a basically negative impression of Shooter.  A buddy of mine is a fan of his blog though and has tried to get me to read it. 
To that end, he sent me a link to the blog in which this particular thread has been discussed.  My buddy isn't exactly a fan of who he thinks JB is so I was pretty much prepared to read an entirely different POV from Shooter on the "how to throw a punch" recollection by JB.  Complete denial caught me off guard though.  Just thought the followup would be appreciated by those who are interested.

jimshootersaid...

Never happened.

Ask people who know me if the tale as he relates it rings true.

Those of you who have read my lectures, do they sound arbitrary and irrational?

If I were such a madman, could I have survived as EIC nearly 10 years and been well rewarded for outstanding service until the company was going through the ugly process of being sold, which put me at odds with owners who were selling us down the river?

I liked Ross Andru and his work. I hired him to do at least one job for me at VALIANT. He was at the end of his career, then, so if he did more it wasn't many.

June 27, 2011 9:19 PM

"Ask people who know me if the tale as he relates it rings true."

••

But don't ask anyone who might have been a witness!!

This is actually an interesting choice of phrasing, for the "response". In this manner, Shooter sets up an automatic dismissal of anyone who disagrees with him, or his version of the Past: clearly, such people don't really "know" him!

Vinny wrote: ...Not to mention that JB has said that Harras was generally hands-off on his late-90's Marvel work. Harras had a rocky start, but he was far from the worst EIC around...

It's pretty bad that Marvel's excuse for firing him was that the company's owners felt he failed to properly capitalize on the success of the first "X-Men" film.

Has any comic book series really seen that much of a boost in NEW comics sales (not back issue sales) due to a film since the first "Batman" in 1989? I can tell you, as a retailer, that as far as my shop is concerned, there's not much of a boost, if any, in sales of the new comics due to a movie coming out. You do get speculators going after the old stuff thinking each time that each new movie will propel the prices of the back issues into the stratosphere, despite the fact that never really occurs.

Reading Andy Mokler's link to Jim Shooter's blog comments, I see Shooter is now taking credit, of a sort, for "Crisis on Ifinite Earths." What didn't he create or what wasn't he responsible for, that was momentous, anyway, directly or indirectly? Huh.

Jim Shooter wrote: ...One proposal for the 25th Anniversary that was floated and shot down instantly was the "Big Bang." The idea was that we'd end all titles and start again, keeping what was good and ignoring things that were bad or out of date. We'd get Reed Richards out of fighting with the French Underground in WWII, get Iron man's origin out of Viet Nam, the Hulk's origin away from being due to an above-ground nuclear test, etc. The concept was briefly bandied around, and in fact, I had recommended it to Jeannette Kahn for DC years earlier. Turns out Gerry Conway had also recommended such a thing to DC before I did. They needed it more than we did. I think that notion became part of the basis for Crisis....

••

The "Batman" TV series, starring Adam West, created such am upsurge in sales of the BATMAN comics that the character was actually saved from cancellation!

The important difference, of course, is that when "Batman" was on TV, BATMAN comics were sold on the newsstand, in drugstores, at train stations, bus depots, grocery stores, etc, etc.

By the time Harras was EiC, the Direct Sales Market was virtually the ONLY place Marvel comics could be found -- which meant anyone inspired by the X-Men movie to pick up an X-MEN comic would have to make a deliberate effort to seek out a comic shop, and that might require a journey of a considerable distance.

The DSM has removed the SPONTANEITY of buying comics, and that makes it almost impossible to cash in on successful movies.